Fish hydrolysate is an awesome product for promoting plant growth. It’s high in Nitrogen, can be naturally produced, and is an awesome food for microbes. Fungi love it and it is easily produced at home. We use it as straight fertiliser, animal supplement and an ingredient in compost teas (Fungi: Bacteria balanced- Fungi orientated).

Fish hydrolysate is composed of fish and glucose based sugars and uses lacto bacillus to break everything down using enzymes. Fish hydryolysate doesn’t undergo the heating and skimming process that you get with fish emulsion products. Heating breaks down beneficial amino acid chains and this cold process also retains the fats and oils that microbes love.

This article documents the major patterning of the farm at Ridgedale PERMACULTURE as we laid the Keyline tree lanes and planted thousands of long term perennial crops within our pasture lanes. For a better introduction to the farm's context you can read an article here. Water systems and Keyline patterning is also addressed here. The original plan for the tree layers of the farm design is outlined in another article available here. So now we explain & assess the actual implementation. For context, at the time of this work we ourselves had only been on site for 6 weeks and the planning, layout, machine work and major planting all took place in Week 1 and 2 of our 10 Week Internship. (We have another 10 Week Internship program running July- Sept)

Want to be in to win a free copy of this AWESOME book? As part of our fair share policy we have been giving away free awesome books to people all over the globe every fortnight (well, to be fair, we have been a little slack lately with all that's going on and our current internet connection). The 2011 Garden Writers of America Gold Award for Best Writing/Book proves soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life; and not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial substances, many of them toxic to humans as well as other forms of life. But there is an alternative to this vicious circle: to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web; the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants.

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden. Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water. We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making.

This is the third of a series of articles looking at design considerations for our Cold Climate Permaculture site using the Keyline Scale of Permanence as a organizing framework, as well as an informative read for anyone interested.

Getting a good Microscope for on farm monitoring of soil development

View of soil organisms (image courtesy mauby.com)

Life in the soil is what drives fertility. As primary producers our responsibility is to feed, nourish and grow soil. At a training for farmers on the King & Queens home island in Stockholm we looked at several effective ways for farmers & land managers to engage in the monitoring of the impacts of their activities & decision making on soil health. Certain tools are really worth having. A good soil microscopy unit means we can monitor population changes of soil foodweb organisms, monitor compost processes and create compost teas that are simply teaming with beneficial support organisms to restore healthy populations back into the soil. Building healthy soil is our primary responsibility and the core solution to many agricultural problems.